Aspen Plastic Bag Ban Has Collected Over $44K In Just Over A Year

A 20-cent plastic bag fee imposed in one Colorado mountain town has really added up.

The City of Aspen has raised $44,826 in fees since the ban was put into place in May of 2012, according to a report by The Aspen Times.

Despite being a famous Colorado ski town, Aspen only has two grocery stores which were allowed to keep $1,000 of the money raised in the first year and an extra $100 each month following that.

The remainder of the money goes to a city-administered fund which is used to pay for outreach, implementation and a waste reduction program which supplies free reusable bags at Aspen's airport, car rental facilities, hotels and the city's Department of Environmental Health.

But the ban does not come without its challenges. The Mountain States Legal Foundation has a pending lawsuit against Aspen's bag ban, arguing that the plastic bag fee is actually a tax that's illegal under the state's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR).

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10 Hot Green Innovations

Aspen Plastic Bag Ban Has Collected Over $44K In Just Over A Year

10 Hot Green Innovations

10 Hot Green Innovations

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Bike Shares

Bike share programs have revolutionized transportation in some of the country's largest cities, like Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Miami Beach and Boston.
For a daily or annual fee (usually around $7 or $75 respectively), users can check out a bike for about 30 minutes at a stand-alone kiosk, ride it around the city, and then check it in at any other kiosk in the system with no extra charge.
The idea has been popular overseas since 2007 and there are now massive programs in cities like Paris (16,000 bikes), London (8,000), and Hangzhou, China (65,000). <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/27/citi-bike-share-program-launches_n_3342202.html" target="_blank">New York launched it's own 10,000-bike version, Citi Bike, earlier this year</a>.
Many other cities (like Portland, Seattle, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles) have programs in the works.